No parking? No problem

Today’s editorial: The favoritism that city officials said was gone from the way Albany handles parking violations seems to be doing just fine.

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What’s someone with more than $900 in unpaid parking tickets, the second-worst scofflaw in Albany, doing driving around the city? Why hasn’t that person’s car been booted or impounded? How can that person, the owner of a popular downtown nightclub, get away with it?

These are more than idle questions. They’re raised by Times Union staff writer Brendan J. Lyons’ recent report on the relationship between Timothy Rankins, owner of Envy Lounge in the North Pearl Street bar district, and the Albany police that includes providing free meals for officers. And the questions raise doubts about how much really has changed a year after a parking ticket scandal rocked city government. That is what is at issue here, far more than the details of one motorist and his tickets.

The decals that meant you got a ticket that carried no fine are no more, Mayor Jerry Jennings promised months ago. So, too, supposedly, are the lists of people well-connected enough to only get what were known as ghost tickets. Yet here’s Mr. Rankins, seemingly able to play by rules far different from what most people driving around in search of parking spaces in a downtown with an acute shortage of them must endure.

A mere $200 in overdue parking fines can get your car booted in Albany. Mr. Rankins has $945 in unpaid fines. Another ticket issued last year to his SUV — $195, for parking in a handicapped zone on North Pearl Street — was not found in city records when this newspaper made a Freedom of Information request for it. A copy of the ticket the Times Union previously obtained can be seen at http://tinyurl.com/ydb68sb.

Three other cars were ticketed that same night, by the same police officer, for parking in a handicapped zone. The owners of those vehicles all paid their fines.

On another occasion, the police department says, Mr. Rankins’ vehicle was booted, but only briefly before a commander ordered the boot removed. What gives? More to the point, what’s really changed in a city where a two-tiered system of enforcing the parking laws — one for the insiders, another for everyone else — had not only been exposed, but ostensibly abolished?

Mr. Rankins has other problems as well, relating to his bar business. He was charged Thursday in connection with allegations that he failed to pay $191,000 in state sales taxes, and has been cited for violations of the state’s liquor laws. That other law enforcement agencies kept Albany police in the dark until the last minute about a raid at one of Mr. Rankins’ former bars suggests we’re not the only ones with concerns about the department’s integrity here.

That, and the continued appearance of a double standard regarding tickets, are more matters awaiting the attention of the mayor, the Common Council and the city’s next police chief.